Google credibility after the Panda Update

[darkyl]

Does anyone else think that Google is harming its own credibility with such large, sudden changes in its results?

Google is not just a search engine: in the internet market it is an authority which basically reviews websites and tells you which ones are the best.

If we compared Google's behaviour with similar authorities in other sectors, the judgement would be harsh.

A couple of examples:
- How could a financial ratings authority (like Moody's or S&P) justify the fact that companies they rated "the best" for years are now rated "junk" if those companies haven't changed at all?

- Would you trust, as a user, a reviews website that tells you that a product is the best in its market and the day after it's not even in the top 500?

- As an advertiser would you trust an intermediary that makes you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads space on several "top" websites and the day after tells you those website are worth nothing?

The harshness of the demotion of many of the sites that have been hit is also nonsensical to me. For most queries there aren't hundreds of on topic, specific pages to show.
That's why Google shows less and less related results the more you go on with results pages.
So you search for "Green Widgets" and on page 5 of the serps you see pages titled "Widgets for pakistani astronauts" (ok, i'm exaggerating here).

Even if you dislike content farms a lot, you can't tell me that their on topic articles are less interesting for the user than those totally unrelated or minimally related pages. I would understand a minus 5/10/20 drop for websites hit by Panda, but minus 300? 500?

I believe in Google's goodwill on its quest for quality and I appreciate its independence in the choiches they make but no ones likes total unpredictability.
Google should be very careful on this matter: losing consistency in the eyes of users, publishers, advertisers and, why not, investors, is a dangerous path and many might prefer to put their efforts/energy/money/resources elsewhere.

[Vamm]

@darkyl,

If the answer is correct or not does not affect Google search. The same thing as a library, if you ask a librarian for the book of recipies, and the book says put in this and that, top up with one gramm cyanide, stir, drink; this is not a librarian fault that the book was wrong. The librarian knows nothing of chemistry.

Another issue is that of identical sites, if two sites are full identical on-site, external factors excluded, than it does not matter which of the two is shown and also if they are both correct or both flawed. For many practical applications, there is no single best site and there would be no perceptible difference betwen two candidate sites. Still, an update removing one site and promoting another instead causes a massive uproar.

Worse yet with scraping, if one makes a full mirror of Wikipedia, this is a full equivaluent with the origial except freshly updated articles. Thus for many of articles you can just drop the original wikipedia and put a copycat at #1 position with no practical effect, information-wise.

[onepointone]

"Trusted site" should mean something. How many times g has sent me to a site that sets off my virus alarm? More than a few.

And if accurate information and original information is irrelevant, g becomes just a crude 'phone book' of the web. It won't work in the long run.

Black hats can adapt more than white hats in the near term, But in the end, g will just send people to the sites that make them the most $.

[Vamm]

Original is fully irrelevant if we considering exact copies. The answer like "water boils at 100 deg. C given standard pressure" does not change from the fact if it is original or copy. A searcher satisfaction with the result is the same. The legality part may be different, but searcher satisfaction part identical. Even more so if the answer can be gleaned from the snippet alone, without visiting actual site.

As far as correctness goes, there is nothing Google can do about it. The plane on the conveyor belt is the most easy example, people been arguing on a simple yes/no question for several years now. One should not practically expect Google to figure out the correctess of an answer.

[Whitey]

If it was a trade secret, then all we can do is listen to what Matt Cutts and other say.

The trade secrets are irrelevant and useless to most of us - but some sort of generalised health check panel and warning in WMT would surely help. Surely this can be done , and if Google practices what it preaches about improving quality for the user, it would have no problem with this.

Legitimate business' and sites should not be unduly compromised, unless Google wants to promote listing in the SERP's a game.

Something's got to be done with the manner Google does things if it isn't going to upset all the digital marketers on the planet.

[Pjman]

How many times g has sent me to a site that sets off my virus alarm? More than a few.

Post Panda on 3 of Keywords I have several virus drive-by sites beating me by about 6 places.

Really Google? Those 3 drive-by download sites with 3 pages each are more trusted than my 35,000 page, 13 year old site that both CNN, NY Times, Forbes, several University thesis and countless other reporters have cited as an authority?

[ErnestHemingway]

This is a very good thread, what I want to say is that this update hit all kind of sites good and bad. In large google things that their update did a good job.

Now I wonder if someone here can DESCRIBE QUALITY to me. Because there are various things to consider when you try to evaluate quality.

So Google says that before rolling this update they had tens and thousands of query rated by actual humans (people in 3rd world countries)

Now for love of god, what were these people told can someone tell me?

How can someone having no knowledge of "Chess" can rate a site? I can have a chess site with tons of ads but killer content about square strategies, piece evaluation, positional analysis, psychology, openings, end game, tablebases, ponder, hashtables, etc etc.

A person having no knowledge of the topic cannot possibly give a valuable rating to my site. So Google has to be transparent and tell us if they are hiring EXPERTS in each arena and getting them to check sites and give their rating.

Because if you were to ask me and rate top 10 listings for a "forex software" I would probably give a BS rating. Now another idea comes in mind.

If I have great killer content done by an expert and I am providing value to the end user. So what is wrong if I put few ads here and there (specific locations as advised by Google).

So if someone visits my site and then clicks an Ad then that is good for everyone isn't it?

Someone found a relevant ad on my site he clicked on it, he went to that page and made a transaction or whatever. Google made some money, I made some money and the advertiser made a sale.

It is so hard to describe quality as the guy at Suite101 said Google will have to be transparent with all this.

Further if I have quality content why should I work on header and design and such if I do not have knowledge but I have great content and few ads here and there? How can someone in 3rd world country rate that? This drives me crazy.

2 of my sites got hit in this update:

1. One of the most popular electronic engineering site, it was running online for a decade I never took the time to update it because there was nothing else to add. It had old 90s design tons of killer content 2000+ words, graphics, infographic, videos, expert tips but still it got hit, now the results for my query are JUNK SITES. So I will take this as I was unlucky and got hit.

2. Another site of mine started by my friend Marty way back in 1999 when not a single person had a site about "NAILS" we created the site since 1999 that site have links from WSJ, Time, LaTimes, NyTimes, tons and tons of .edu(all natural), recommendations on Wikipedia pages and links from tons of publications and research papers my site gets hit and now I am not on first 10 pages. And I was the leader in the industry for that site since 1999 not a single site had been able to put up all that. I was not raking cash from it, it was a fun project with tons of great content and images. Only thing that sucked about the site was again it had 1990s style design but content was so great I still get emails from professors thanking us for putting up that page and saving them days and weeks of research.

WebMd links to us all the time, we were on ABC,AOL but now the site is gone.

Now on the other hand the 1st page currently is dominated by random junk MFA sites. I have no idea what is going on with Google.

Scrapped/Stolen content is beating the real website this is another bs that Google will not admit. Real software sites that created the software are being outranked by review sites for the actual software query. You call this query?

I did gain rankings on some sites but those sites didn't deserve what my 2 sites (10 years old each) deserved.

I have no doubt that not a single rater that rated my site had any knowledge about SUPER TINY SPECIFICS OF NAILS (HUMAN NAILS) nor he/she knew about EE. This just drives me nut when Google says this is QUALITY update.

Pushing Youtube, google shopping, news, twitter, facebook pages, local ads within the listing is what you call quality?

You have killed the competition for Local Seo with all the 7 packs that you guys list.

We webmasters spend time and energy in finding experts on the topic and then getting it to rank for a query and then one update spam is ranking and good material is gone. What about our time and energy spent? What about our quality content? What about our hard work in acquiring those links from authority sites? All gone in vain?

Google YELLS and YELLS day and night you hear the so called GURU Matt Cutts that blog commenting, directory submission and spam is not the way to go. But for love of god that stuff works, how long should I wait for that to disappear and stop working?

I am seeing that for past 4 years? Been in those niches myself I know the top guy is raking 100k-200k a year and you add that for 5years the guy has made enough to support other ventures.

You tell us good webmasters to follow your guidelines but you break it all the time and others break it and are not getting hammered I am hearing since 2003 that Google is doing this and doing that but you guys are just killing good webmaster business with these updates by helping already million dollar businesses.

Please get your act together or it will not be far before we good webmasters block your Bot and work with Bing.

Once the users cannot find good content on Google they will simple go to bing.

And bing has been catching up, seriously if you see some terms their results are getting better and better day by day and it is a reality they will catch up Google with all the stuff that Google is doing.

Getting SOCIAL GETTING SOCIAL is driving Google insane, they are killing their money making machine trying to become social.

As shared in that finance article, the engineers never gave thought to the financial side of these updates how much Google will lose in Adsense and others.

Thanks for hearing my frustration with google my good friends at WebmasterWorld.

[chrisv1963]

So Google says that before rolling this update they had tens and thousands of query rated by actual humans (people in 3rd world countries)

Are you sure the raters were in third world countries? How can someone in a third world country rate an American website? Differences in cultures , expectations, ... If Google really used this type of raters, then I can perfectly understand why Panda is such a mess and Google's biggest failure ever.

Also, how sure can Google be that raters really "rate"? Some could as weel sit half asleep in front of the computer screen, click or fill whatever and collect their paycheck at the end of the month.

[ErnestHemingway]

@Chrisv1963, you are telling me Google is hiring raters in Canada/US/UK for $30-$40/hr? I doubt so. They are outsourcing labor work somewhere.

And you made a great point. What bothers me most is that GOOGLE CANNOT POSSIBLY HIRE EXPERTS in each vertical to rate the rankings.

And hiring random people to rate a website based on some general question is so vague.

If Google does not want Adsense around then just take that business away for love of God but stop this madness.

Adsense/Adwords is what drives Google otherwise they have nothing else that can put money into their madness.

[danijelzi]

Pjman, I'm experiencing the same. A .com.my malware site with a copy of my content outranks my 5-year old .com site in the Google US search results.

[crobb305]

ugh, I hit a result and the big red "malware" alert popped up (Chrome). I hit the back button and it started downloading anyway! I had to close the browser. This happened on my PC, and thankfully Norton popped up.

Also, I am seeing more and more traffic from phrases that contain obscenities and slurs, simply because the linking pages contain those words. Chalk this up to poor semantic detection, because my site does not use that language. Google should exclude obscenities from its semantic detection if those words aren't actually found on the destination page. Incidentally, I am ranking #1 for those queries. This makes my site look bad (assuming anyone searches those terms to see what ranks).

These two factors are things that could affect their credibility, IMO.

[AlyssaS]

you are telling me Google is hiring raters in Canada/US/UK for $30-$40/hr? I doubt so. They are outsourcing labor work somewhere.

And you made a great point. What bothers me most is that GOOGLE CANNOT POSSIBLY HIRE EXPERTS in each vertical to rate the rankings.

You don't have to pay people $30-$40 per hour to provide feedback from the average searchers point of view. Lots of Moms looking for extra income will be willing to do it for the minimum wage in the current economy. And given that most searchers are like them, they do the job well.

Also - where did you get the idea that G was looking for feedback from "experts"?

They are trying to satisfy the average user - who most decidedly is NOT an expert. They are trying to work out what makes the average visitor decide to trust one site, but hurriedly backspace from another.

You don't have to be an "expert" to provide feedback like that. You just need to say truthfully, "I like this website, I don't like that one".

I think you mentioned that one of your websites that got demoted hadn't been updated for a decade. That might be a problem in itself. Think about how much the offline world and online world has changed in the last decade. Processors have got faster, operating systems have been upgraded, tablet PCs have become popular, and so on.

Imagine if a store insisted on displaying and selling the same fashions as they did in 2000. Would ordinary customers start to avoid them? It's the same thing online. Once people get used to a new "look", because their favorite site has upgraded (and you'll notice that sites like the BBC and major news sites upgrade their designs every few years), then the old sites with the old look, can seem, well, out of date and neglected.

I myself look at sites I made a few years ago and wonder how on earth I thought they were the bees knees at the time, and upgrade them instinctively.

[chrisv1963]

ugh, I hit a result and the big red "malware" alert popped up (Chrome). I hit the back button and it started downloading anyway! I had to close the browser. This happened on my PC, and thankfully Norton popped up.

Panda algo: malware alert = red color = quality = good ranking.
It is a joke that sites with malware are still ranking on Google. Why can't an algo ban domains that server malware?

[crobb305]

Panda algo: malware alert = red color = quality = good ranking. It is a joke that sites with malware are still ranking on Google. Why can't an algo ban domains that server malware?

What really bothered me is that the serp didn't say "This site may harm your computer." Did they remove that warning?

[koan]

I can have a chess site with tons of ads but killer content

Really, if the only thing standing between a good site and good ranking is spammy ads, it would be an easy case to fix.

[walkman]

What really bothered me is that the serp didn't say "This site may harm your computer." Did they remove that warning?

Just searched Google images for pictures of a certain ethnic group in Algeria (they want autonomy) and e fake scan started on my PC.

Really, if the only thing standing between a good site and good ranking is spammy ads, it would be an easy case to fix.

That's why I suggested that people look at their adsense ads and if possible take them out. They are a strong MFA signal.

[crobb305]

Just searched Google images for pictures of a certain ethnic group in Algeria (they want autonomy) and a fake scan started on my PC

This is similar to what happened to me, but I was given the red-page malware warning. Hitting the back button, the scan started anyway. That has to be a glitch in Chrome, but Google SERP should have warned me B4 I went to the site -- there was no warning on the SERP. Better yet, the page shouldn't even be indexed if the algorithm has knowledge that the page poses a danger.

I know I mentioned this, but it deeply disturbs me: I am still getting traffic and #1 rankings on phrases that have slurs and obscenities in the query. These words are NOT contained in the anchor text of the inbound links and they are NOT found on my site. They are coming from semantic detection of words found on a page that happens to link to me (the link is not located anywhere near the obscene words). It really bothers me because for my site to rank #1 on those phrases could reflect negatively upon my business by users unfamiliar with semantic detection.

I know that contacting Google does no good. There is nothing I/we can do. We're stuck with the crap we're being dealt right now. I just hope an engineer is reading some of this so they can apply the same word/phrase filters from the auto-complete into the semantic-detection algorithms.

[edited by: crobb305 at 12:00 am (utc) on Apr 20, 2011]

[Lame_Wolf]

This is similar to what happened to me, but I was given the red-page malware warning.

Ditto.

[Shatner]

I get malware 50% of the time when I use Google Image Search. It's REALLY bad. For some reason Image search is a lot, lot worse for this than just web search. It's a serious problem though.

[m0thman]

Being dinged by G is part of a rite of passage. You are not a proper webmaster till you've experienced a serious blooding, but then come out on the other side of it. It happens to us all.

Glad to hear you say that. I've been in business for a few years and haven't been penalized by an update... until Panda. It's like that old fashioned game of oranges and lemons, this time the chopper got me, and I still can't figure out why. Fortunately the regulars are still happy so I'll fix what I *think* the problems may be and keep plodding on.

[SirTox]

People often say that Bing is the answer to our woes. Sadly, Bing will never catch Google unless there is an IE/Netscape type of lawsuit. Even if Bing caught up, they steal results from Google, so you'd be right back at square one. I have hope for DuckDuckGo, but I think Facebook is where we should be looking.

Remember when news of the Facebook Like button hit? Many webmasters worried people would stop using Google and use Facebook for everything. Webmasters were scrambling to put that Like button on their site, fearing that they'd be left out of the Facebook rush.

Google still is king, but that's only because people like us spend all of our time figuring out what Google likes and bowing down to them every time they make a change.

I say enough! I'm now embracing this Facebook thing I once feared. I'm gon' get me a bunch of people to like my FB page and advertise my wares on there. Instead of making content that answers a Google query, I'm going to make "bubble gum" content that the AOL/FB crowd will enjoy. I've already had a couple of popular posts that have been shared all over FB. Maybe I'll talk about what happened on American Idol last night. Maybe about what happened on The Real Housewives. It seems to work! And they click more ads!

Anything written for the brain-dead seems to do well. It's sad but true. This is why MTV is still popular. Content is still king, you just have to give the people the dumb stuff they really want. It seems better than spending my days trying to answer queries with honest and accurate information only to have a monopoly slap me every year and give priority to the sites that provide scraped or inaccurate info.

[ken_b]

Credibility? Surely you jest?

Yesterday I searched for a user manual for a Whirlpool range, including the model number. In the past this tactic has worked pretty well. Usually the serps returned the manufacturers appropriate page in spot 1 - 2.

Handy shortcut for this type of search as some manufacturers sites are, uhhh, less than user friendly.

Yesterday the first spot was taken by a site about astrophysics.

That might have been a fluke since I haven't been able to get the same result again. But even if it was a fluke, it speaks loudly about G's credibility these days.

[supercyberbob]

For me, my trustrank for Gooble has gone down the toilet.

Why? I just think their handling of the Panda update has been quite the gong show.

Their latest webmasters blog post entitled "More guidance on building high-quality sites" dated May 06, 2011, is to me just damage control.

I understand trying to prevent the update being gamed, but no mention of what kind of timelines to expect for recovery after making changes? Wot?

There is more mistrust now than ever. Is that statement somewhat accurate, or am I way off?

#*$!xx

[tedster]

There is some mistrust, but I don't think it increased. And despite the vocal outcry here, the general climate that I run into professionally hasn't really shifted - if anything, many people I speak to in the industry to are quite impressed that Google would sacrifice Adsense clicks in an effort to do something this highly adventurous. Machine learning to add quality assessment to the core algorithm is a major undertaking.

One thing is for sure, according to this story on WebProNews, DemandMedia is taking Google quite seriously:

Demand Media Deletes eHow Articles, Edits Others in Quality Clean-up Initiative [webpronews.com]

[supercyberbob]

Thanks tedster.

It would be really interesting to see if those changes made on eHow result in any recovery down the line.

[skweb]

Even before the dust on Panda has settled, smart people are already gaming the system, literally poking a finger into their team's eyes. This time it is the online flowers companies.

[nytimes.com...]

[Pjman]

There is some mistrust, but I don't think it increased.

@ tedster

Just like the SERP, it shifted.

12% of the webmasters are re-thinking google in a good way, 12% in a negative way.

Do we all do this?

[walkman]

12% of the webmasters are re-thinking google in a good way, 12% in a negative way.

I posted this in another thread but it's not this way. Maybe a 0.5% increase in G referrals to Amazon can shut down many hundreds of small businesses at the same time so it's not one business goes up, one goes down. One may go up just a bit and 1000 shut down in overnight as a result.

[supercyberbob]

Here's an article dated today titled "Email Trail Suggests Google Is Already the Next Microsoft".

[windowsitpro.com...]

The funny part is I don't think I saw any mention of Panda in there.

ok, I guess it's not that funny. :(